A type of network deployment has been introduced in a next generation wireless network. In this type of deployment, one base station serves two different cells, and a user equipment may simultaneously keep connections to the two different cells served by the base station. Of the two cells that simultaneously keep connections to the user equipment, one is a primary serving cell and the other is a secondary serving cell.
In the prior art, after the user equipment detects that a radio link failure occurs on a link between the user equipment and the primary serving cell, the link may recover from the radio link failure by using an re-establishing process. In this process, a signaling radio bearer (SRB) between the user equipment and the base station is re-established, and security between the user equipment and the base station is reactivated. In a new type of network deployment, the primary serving cell and the secondary serving cell may also belong to different base stations. A base station to which the primary serving cell belongs may be referred to as a primary base station, and a base station to which the secondary serving cell belongs may be referred to as a secondary base station. When the user equipment detects that a radio link failure occurs on a link between the user equipment and the secondary base station, a signaling radio bearer between the user equipment and the primary base station is still re-established and security between the user equipment and the primary base station is reactivated in the prior art. However, probably no radio link failure occurs between the user equipment and the primary base station at this moment. In this case, the signaling radio bearer between a terminal and the primary base station does not need to be re-established and the security between the user equipment and the primary base station also does not need to be reactivated. As a result, unnecessary information interaction between the user equipment and the primary base station increases, and a network resource is wasted.